


HOW TO EAT LIFE

by adoluvr (orphan_account)



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Implied Murder, M/M, Metaphysical Reality, Minor Violence, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29655645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/adoluvr
Summary: “Merumeru, you’re actin’ high again.”HiMERU looks at him with dazed eyes. “--Amagi, HiMERU killed his brother.”“See? You’re actin’ high, again.”
Relationships: Amagi Rinne/HiMERU
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	HOW TO EAT LIFE

**Author's Note:**

> im working on actual coherent things i swear. anyways not betad

In the weird sort of sense that comes along the fact that you’ve just watched your brother topple down on a flight of stairs and crumple down on the cold, wooden floor with his hands clutching his sides and a pool of red oozing out beneath his head, Kaname Tojou transcends into a metaphysical reality wherein he is Kaname Tojou no more. 

His hair is blue (You are Kaname Tojou) and his skin is pale (You are Kaname Tojou) and his eyes are golden (You are Kaname Tojou) but his shirt is gray (You are Kaname) and there’s a single, long strand of hair swept across his forehead (You are Toujou) and his hands are oozing red, 

Red, like a waterfall pummelling down on unmarked territory yet to be found, never to be found.

You are not who you are. There’s red, spider-like black vines tightening around your ankles, your wrists, your neck. They’re here to collect what makes you Who you are. They’re here to collect Kaname Tojou. What will you do?

What will you become?

* * *

HiMERU wakes up with a start. In the weird sort of sense that comes along the fact that you’ve just toppled down on a flight of stairs and crumpled on the cold, wooden floor of an ages-old apartment just yesterday, his head starts to swirl.

He reaches out for a metaphorical anchor, is met by a freezing, cold glass of transparent concoction lying on his bed-side table instead. He takes this glass, calls it his metaphorical anchor anyways, and puts it to his lips and tips back his neck.

It flows. The transparent concoction. HiMERU closes his eyes. He’d like to be the transparent concoction.

* * *

The Sun sighs with her heavy head as HiMERU opens the door of his apartment with the dirty bandages still around his head (Why?) and the symbolic gray shirt (Obviously) and the single, long strand of blue hair swept across his forehead (Why?) and then she looks down at him with her arms strewn lazily on an entrapped cloud and gives him a very, very lovely frown.

“HiMERU-chan,” she says, glowing golden against the blue, soda hues of the sky behind her. “Is your head alright?”

“--I don’t believe it to be any of your business.”

HiMERU steps down one step. He almost trips.

* * *

“You’re like,” the red-haired devil says as soon as he steps inside the designated building for the shattering of dreams, “Constantly high or sumn’ - the hell you mean the  _ Sun _ tried t’insult ya?”

HiMERU does not spare Satan's spawn a single, little gay look. “--None of your business, Amagi.”

“Course. Never is. Hey,” Amagi adds, cheerfully. “Whaddya think about body shots?”

HiMERU vaguely fantasizes about falling off the stairs, again. The vines seem to notice his distress, crumbling their way out of the concrete floor to wrap around his ankles in a subtle warning. HiMERU looks down at them. And then back up at the metaphysical knife (fork) Amagi seems to be holding in his hand.

Amagi drops it to the ground.

* * *

In the evenings, the vines shift from the color black to the color purple the same way those magic dinosaurs change shape and grow thicker, longer if left in an expanse of space filled with the transparent concoction. These vines are friendlier. They don’t wrap around HiMERU’s ankles without explicit consent and they don’t follow him around in his regular, normal day-to-day odd jobs as do the early-morning ones that inevitably belong in some sort of void.

This is because the black vines are, mostly, NEETs. The purple vines put on prescribed minus four point two glasses on their little prickly heads and sling a little briefcase on their back and go to morning jobs. This is why they’re more respectful, more sentient.

* * *

Amagi is good at driving the vines away. He drops by HiMERU’s apartment exclusively on Saturdays and he lays down next to him and tells him about some weird motherfucker at the eighteen plus club he works at and HiMERU listens to him with the attention of an ant that’s just consumed a hearty amount of food and is getting fatter by the second. The vines stay at their place (under?inside?beside his bed?) and they listen to HiMERU and they listen to Amagi and they listen to the weird motherfucker at the eighteen plus club that’s just swung a bottle at HiMERU’s expensive, glass window and they listen to Amagi getting up and jumping out of it to run after him.

He scratches his arm. There’s a small, nearly non-existent trail of blood dripping down broken glass.

HiMERU looks at it. A banal part of him wants to lick it all up. The rational part of him tells him the Sun’s jingly ways of speaking are getting at his head, too much.

* * *

The vines are most disrespectful at 6 AM. This is when it becomes fair to keep Amagi close, because as we have learned before Amagi the physical incarnation of a vine-repellant. HiMERU wakes him and ignores his naked torso in favor of kicking at the orange vines sneaking him to curl into every individual toe and morosely wrapping his arms around Amagi’s chest and holding him down in the crook of his neck.

HiMERU breathes him in.

Yeah. Kaname wouldn’t be cut out for something like this.

(he smells like mint shampoo left out in the sun’s hands for three days straight. kaname never liked mint)

* * *

You are Kaname Tojou. Don’t go around forgetting that.

* * *

It’s easier to forget, though?

* * *

“Merumeru, you’re actin’ high again.”

HiMERU looks at him with dazed eyes. “--Amagi, HiMERU killed his brother.”   
  


If he flinches, he's good at covering it up with a swig of root beer. “See? You’re actin’ high, again.”

* * *

The day Himeru Tojou falls on the stairs and cracks his head on the wooden, cold floor, and leaves the physical world in favor of the metaphysical, Kaname Tojou watches from above. 

The white bandages loosen themselves on his head, fall down in the void as if it’s a conscious choice. 

There is blood on your hands. There is blood on your hands. There is blood on your hands.

Kaname Tojou, there’s blood on your hands. 

There’s one thing left to do. The vines are cackling to themselves.

* * *

“Shouldn’t you, like, get arrested?”

HiMERU shakes his head. “--It’d only be a waste of time. HiMERU would like to spend more time with you, Amagi.”

Amagi laughs, and takes a swig of the root beer he’s been holding onto for the past hour. “That’s fuckin’ creepy.” 

* * *

It’s not creepy. Amagi’s just a bully.

* * *

There is blood on my hands.

A day passes. And then another. And then another. And

* * *

There is blood on my hands.

Amagi’s kisses do nothing to quell it. Amagi’s beer does nothing to quell it. Amagi’s touch does nothing to quell it.

HiMERU places his hands down firmly, looks up and into the bathroom mirror. His toothbrush is toppled over, possibly because of the impact of his fists upon the marble top.

Kaname Tojou stares back at him. There’s a circle of red around his neck.

  
  
  


HiMERU retches.

* * *

“Stomach ache?” Amagi mumbles to himself. “Eh? I thought it ain’t possible for men to get pregnant?”

“--Shut your vulgar mouth.” HiMERU coughs for the fifty-seventh time. Amagi just laughs as he always does. Boisterous. Unfazed. Incredibly, incredibly endearing,

“Can’t help it, Meru. It isn’t everyday ya get to take care of a murderer.”

* * *

The vines slowly, slowly start to ebb away.

Ah. Is it because the spawn of Satan’s called him what he is?

* * *

You’re stopping the music, one tap on the Huawei and throwing it on the couch. The speakers stop blaring. The room stops shaking. So does Amagi’s hips, unnecessarily clothed and unnecessarily insistent. 

“Kaname,” Amagi says, more of a statement than an actual question. “Y’good?”

“--No,” you say, because you’re Kaname Tojou and you have been murdered.

* * *

You have been murdered. Or have you?

* * *

HiMERU kneels down in front of his bed.

“--Come out,” he calls. In any case, he’s always been the fool. Calling out to metaphorical vines under his bed isn’t the worst thing. For a murderer, at least.

On his end, they  _ do  _ end up coming out. Tippy-toed, smoke-balls, red heels clicking against the wooden floor as they strut towards him. One after another. Like they’re on a tight-string stretched out five hundred meters above over civilization.

“You’ve never called us, before,” their ringleader says. His voice is deeper than it should be. For a metaphysical plant.

“--HiMERU’s never needed to.”

“Then why now?”

“--Because you are the only one that can help HiMERU.”

The ringleader raises a brow. Not that vines should have brows. But he raises a brow.

“Help you with what?”

HiMERU blinks. And then points at him. “--To kill you.”

* * *

There’s a knife waiting on his coffee table when HiMERU comes back from work in the evening (grey jacket) (white shirt) (tight, faded jeans) (black sneakers) (at the eighteen plus club) (30,000 yen in his hand). 

He picks it up, goes to his room. There’s no red-headed Amagi sitting half-naked on his bed, this time.

* * *

Kaname Tojou plunges the knife into his stomach at six-fifty in the evening. He lays there, in the puddle of his blood, oozing out as easy and as lovely as the day he’d pushed Himeru Tojou.

Ah. Is this how peace feels like?

* * *

Amagi closes down the eighteen plus club a week later. His brother’s showed up to the city, anyway.

  
  
  


After all, they’re not Romeo and Juliet.

**Author's Note:**

> apologies i just finished omori


End file.
